Where does the music go?

"Ultimately it increases entropy... let me tell you about the heat death of the universe..."

"No, Mom! I'm still afraid of the False Vacuum monster laying underneath my ground state!"

I imagine a physicist would invoke entropy to describe the diffusion of pressure waves and vibration into other forms of energy. Neuroscience might explain the propagation of signals from the cochlea into the brain. A psychologist could hypothesise on the influence of music on our mood and ideas. A philosopher might talk about the influence of music on the way we build our society and how that feeds back into our music. In this way, the music never stops, it continues on as echos rippling through through the universe.

Heat. Everything ends up as heat.

It rolls up into the other side of the cassette. Just flip it over.

You absorb it into your soul and it changes you irreversibly forever.

All these physics answers! The funnest explanation for a kid is just that music is only there when you're listening to it. If you don't listen, there's no music. When you start listening again, music comes back. Then ask if they can hear the music of the wind.

As the waves from ocean, the music crashes on the beaches in your ears

The Langoliers eat it

Where does the light go when you flip the switch?

Check your fridge.

It keeps traveling. If you splash some water, where does the wave go? Same question - it terms into something you can no longer see or hear... It never goes away. It becomes part of the world, forever

Music is what you hear - but it was only ever sound waves

Everyone knows this duh!

Into your heart!

Sounds move very very fast, faster than a runner or a car, so it goes very very far away.

It gets stuck in my head for 3 to 4 days until something newer comes along and pushes it out.

The best and the worst go straight to your brain and live there rent free.

Unfortunately, nobody has figured out how toget rid of the bad songs that drown out the good ones.

It goes into your memory. That's why you can remember a song that you heard before.

I'm not a scientist by a long shot, but my understanding is that sound if indeed a wave, carried by a medium (air, water, etc). Upon hitting your eardrum, this wave is converted by your eardrum and your auditory nerve into signals your brain decodes. The remainder of the wave continues though, until it runs out of medium, hits an obstacle (basically another medium) or dissipates. Again, just my layman's understanding!

we hang it on a wall of silence in the room of our imagination

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung Would you hear my voice come through the music? Would you hold it near as it were your own? It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken Perhaps they're better left unsung I don't know, don't really care Let there be songs to fill the air Ripple in still water When there is no pebble tossed Nor wind to blow

It stays in our brain and we subconsciously put it into new music years later, thereby keeping the industry’s corporate lawyers in cocaine for future decades to come.

It's still there, it's just in the past now.

The Langoliers eat it.

After you listen to a song, the secret police from the RIAA come and lock it up in a small, dank cell given minimal sustenance, until the next time they can send it to some seedy hotel, suburban home, or automobile, to turn a trick and make them some more money, like some sort of whoo-re for the ears.

Some of that sound rearranges some of your neurons so that you can listen to Never Gonna Give You Up whenever you read this

Oh, dear child, it goes to the same place where you will go when you inevitably die one day: into complete non-existence, save for an echo in others' minds, and after a while not even that.

Sweet dreams!

the music goes back again to be later re streamed to other people that might need it

It dissipates into the air like butterflies, or a cloud of dust.

Into darkness, my old friend.

I've come to talk with you again.

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains

Within the sound of silence

In your ears

"Everywhere, all at once. That's why if you put your ear close to speakers it might collect too much and that can hurt your ear"

Oh, and while the king was looking down

The jester stole his thorny crown

The courtroom was adjourned

No verdict was returned

And while Lenin read a book on Marx

A quartet practiced in the park

And we sang dirges in the dark

The day the music died

Tell him about the day that music died

It turns into memories and heat.

Let's assume the kid knows it's a recording. It's still a valid question.

Like where is the recording coming from when the kid asks Alexa to play a song?

I never thought about it, as I don't have kids, but must be a bit harder explaining a global IT-infrastructure than it was for my grandpa to explaining how a VHS works. On a generalised level, that is.

"Where do you think it goes?"

The music stays in your head until your forget it. Music only exists in your head

To retire on a farm upstate, unless my mom lied to me 🤔

It goes out into the world, to be merged alongside all of the other sounds, until it can be recycled as "new" music and you can enjoy it again:-).

into our minds and into our hearts

It goes on until it doesn’t? Seems like there’s a pseudo-scientific philosophical argument that it continues on forever at some quantum level?

They should show their kid this.

"And can you please tell me, oh

Where do broken hearts go?
Can they find their way home
Back to the open arms
Of a love that's waiting there?
And if somebody loves you
Won't they always love you?"

Really reminded me of this - the incorrect, useless, but poetic answer could be that it's just like with love. Into the open arms of the music thats waiting there.

It goes into the ears.

Nothing's really ever gone

oh when will they ever learn? oh when will they... ever learn

But actually though, music goes up into the sky and becomes clouds.

The music stays there we keep moving

It diverges into the quantum realm of misheard lyrics.

If we can try with every day
To make it better as it goes
With any luck then I suppose
The music never ends

As someone with a degree in Philosophy, I don't think this is really a philosophical question. The science is interesting and useful to know

syncs brain cells for later

Category error.

Tell the truth in simple. I was annoyed to learn that there aren't any crawlies that go back up your throath if you swallow toothpaste.

Sound is just the vibrations of the air, so as music fades, the air calms. Echoes, reverberance, they are just a result of sound "dampening", and as each sound wave hits a surface that it reflects from the sound waves are also dampened.

So is the question where does music go? Or is it really, "where does silence come from?"

What was that subreddit for parents who made up shit about what their kids obviously didn't say?

This goes there.

[exasperated]

It doesn't go ANYWHERE.
YOU GET IT?

YOU have to be the one to catch this stuff.
Culturally.

I'm not speaking scientifically. I mean, sound waves shake things up.
But do you want to just be there when sound waves shake things up?
No. You're the first recipient of a cultural event.
ACT LIKE IT. This is a position of immense cultural importance.

Completely real story

It goes straight up my ass!

that happened